[NFP] Portugal (March 2021) - Patch Notes Discussion

[Duke William of Normandy]

I find it weird that Mogadishu's bonus is protecting your traders on water tiles.... can someone explain to me how this bonus is relevant to Mogadishu?

...Somali Pirates? @Andrew Johnson [FXS] said that it references the Medieval Sultanates.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

...Somali Pirates? @Andrew Johnson [FXS] said that it references the Medieval Sultanates.

so Privateer ... I see...

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

so Privateer ... I see...

In exchange for paying them, they promise not to raid your ships.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I find it weird that Mogadishu's bonus is protecting your traders on water tiles.... can someone explain to me how this bonus is relevant to Mogadishu?

Probably Mogadishu is based off of this historical time period considering the city-state icon is the same as the sultanate flag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajuran_Sultanate

But yeah it's pretty much a civfanatic theory that you get to ally yourself with Somali Pirates no matter what the devs say.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

In exchange for paying them, they promise not to raid your ships.

"Pirate? Nay. Privateer. On a sanctioned mission, under the authority and protection of the Crown"

 

[DWilson]

But yeah it's pretty much a civfanatic theory that you get to ally yourself with Somali Pirates no matter what the devs say.

Which makes a lot of sense, given that it's pretty much what Lisbon/Portugal did in the Indian Ocean to earn the same ability.

 

[Luziadus]

Why do you keep referring to a mundane historical fact as if it were some secluded and convoluted bit of information? The history of the Republic and the flag is taught in 5th grade.

The flag is what the people want it to be, not something set in stone for eternity. Since we live in a democracy, I guess you're out of luck:

"Picture of a wild Monarchist Party failing miserably, circa 2019"

as I said you should get your knownledge properly, I never mentioned the Monarchy, your lack of knownledge makes you think blue and white as monarchist colors when is just the colors of Portugal no matter what, if everyone used your logic then most of the countries that are republics have monarchist colors (Brazil, Italy, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Albania, etc) , these countries changed from monarchy to republic and they kept their identity flag colors which it was created, despite in democracy the flag is not what people want to be, is what people should respect as their country origins not a altered stupid logic under a ideology that killed to overthrown a regime instead of doing it in a democratic way respecting the people will.

But if you want to go into political then let show how "popular" really was the republican party during Constitucional Monarchy in the elections, yes the first steps of Democracy were in Monarchy not after 1974 like they teach you in school. You love so much Democracy but the Republic you have was never asked to the people not even the flag was chosen by the people, thats not very democratic.

Moderator Action: Just a reminder, you should not pass negative judgment on the quality of other peoples' arguments (e.g., referring to their opinions or posts as 'ignorant', 'stupid'; etc) ~ LK
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

to the mod : I changed the word "ignorance" to "lack of knownledge" is that ok?

 

[Francel]

I agree with that sentiment.
I still hope the devs manage to find a sweet spot where a civ isn't outright OP with the right decision making, but still unique enough to add a very distinct playstyle.
A leader like Wilhelmina for instance - I really do hate her.
She is about as bland as you can get, and her only real distinguishing feature is that she should prefer to settle along rivers and coast.
But a slight adjacency bonus for districts near a river/polders isn't fun for me at all, which is why I'll happily reroll if I ever get her as a random leader, as she's about as close to being a plain vanilla civ for me as you can get.

Contrast this to someone like Kupe or Aztecs, where you can get some very distinct playstyles and approaches to how you play the game, based on a few features alone that significantly change them from a vanilla civ.

I can remember a long time ago when Civ II was something I played, all the civilizations were essentially identical. In Civ III they were mostly identical. Since then, the civs have grown more unique, with NFP having some of the most unique yet. In my estimation, the most fun civilizations are interesting. What makes a civilization interesting? To me, it's when you have to think about what you're doing, and you can't just do the same thing every time. It's why poker is a much better game than blackjack.

Anyway, regarding the Dutch, I think they are in a decent spot. The polder is one of my favorite UI, and the unique frigate is strong too. The trade route ability is lackluster, but not everything has to be strong. It's weak in light of recent newcomers, granted. I would make it so that +1 culture becomes +2 culture once medieval faires is completed.

Regarding the river ability, there is a simple change that I think would make them much more interesting. Instead of being +2 for being next to any river, it should be +1 for each adjacent river edge. Then, it would be possible to get a sweet +5 from rivers, but only on rare occasions.

 

[UWHabs]

It's a tough one for a quick mod, unfortunately. Feitoria bonuses and the trade modifier are easily adjustable (as numbers), but one is a flat number and the other is a percentage that is applied to every international trade route for Portugal (you can't give it to particular routes, I think).
Giving the feitoria different trade yields like science or culture seems possible too.

Yeah, it's the thing - if you can fit Feitoria, they're quite good. Basically +6 gold and +1.5 production per trade route you send to a city, so you can often easily get multiple routes along the coast.

But you certainly can't fit them against every city, and they do have a somewhat limited placement ruleset, so they're not the sort of thing you can truly spam everywhere. So definitely a tough to balance improvement. Almost wished they changed them up to simply open more route spots. So, like, if they changed Portugal's ability to "can trade with any city on the coast or with a Feitoria", and they changed the Feitoria to be "Must be placed in neutral territory, next to a foreign civ's territory. Extends their territory to the tile, and counts as a Harbor for trading purposes". Now THAT would be awesome for Portugal, since suddenly if you have a foreign civ with a city one off the coast, you can place the feitoria and that will open up a trade slot to the city. Again, maybe it's still somewhat hard to place, but that's my one gripe to date with Portugal are all those annoying cities one off the coast. In my current game I can see at least 5 or 6 cities like that, and if I could manually place these Feitorias, that would open up a ton of new trading partners.

 

[AntSou]

as I said you should get your knownledge properly, I never mentioned the Monarchy, your ignorance makes you think blue and white as monarchist colors when is just the colors of Portugal no matter what, if everyone used your logic then most of the countries that are republics have monarchist colors (Brazil, Italy, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Albania, etc) , these countries changed from monarchy to republic and they kept their identity flag colors which it was created, despite in democracy the flag is not what people want to be, is what people should respect as their country origins not a altered stupid logic under a ideology that killed to overthrown a regime instead of doing it in a democratic way respecting the people will.

But if you want to go into political then let show how "popular" really was the republican party during Constitucional Monarchy in the elections, yes the first steps of Democracy were in Monarchy not after 1974 like they teach you in school. You love so much Democracy but the Republic you have was never asked to the people not even the flag was chosen by the people, thats not very democratic.

This is tiresome.

is just the colours of Portugal no matter what

is what people should respect as their country origins

There's no such thing as a country's "colours". The notion is surreal. But let's follow your logic: The Blue in the Portuguese monarchic flag traces back to the House of Burgundy, from France. They were the colours of Henry I, father of the first King of Portugal.

The Green and Red were first introduced by John I, not the Republic.

not a altered stupid logic under a ideology that killed to overthrown a regime instead of doing it in a democratic way respecting the people will.

1. You're suggesting with a straight face that the democratic revolutions of the 18th to 20th century could have been solved peacefully if only the revolutionaries had asked the monarchs for a democratic vote on overthrowing the monarchy. Thanks for your contribution.

2. One can deduce from the complete lack of political motivation to change the flag that people are perfectly happy with the flag. People will respect whatever they please, and they just so happen not to give a flag representative of the old regime one iota of a thought.

yes the first steps of Democracy were in Monarchy not after 1974 like they teach you in school.

No school anywhere teaches that.

You love so much Democracy but the Republic you have was never asked to the people not even the flag was chosen by the people, thats not very democratic.

Infallible logic. The same person who is of the opinion that people should be forced to respect the monarchic flag also believes that the republican revolutionaries should have prepared a referendum even before there was a democratic republic in place.
----

This """argument""" will get nowhere and I've no interest to discuss it further. In the age of information, as you put it, there's plenty of online forums where individuals are free to share their fetishes with like-minded individuals.

 

[Steamboat Willem]

Yeah, it's the thing - if you can fit Feitoria, they're quite good. Basically +6 gold and +1.5 production per trade route you send to a city, so you can often easily get multiple routes along the coast.

But you certainly can't fit them against every city, and they do have a somewhat limited placement ruleset, so they're not the sort of thing you can truly spam everywhere. So definitely a tough to balance improvement. Almost wished they changed them up to simply open more route spots. So, like, if they changed Portugal's ability to "can trade with any city on the coast or with a Feitoria", and they changed the Feitoria to be "Must be placed in neutral territory, next to a foreign civ's territory. Extends their territory to the tile, and counts as a Harbor for trading purposes". Now THAT would be awesome for Portugal, since suddenly if you have a foreign civ with a city one off the coast, you can place the feitoria and that will open up a trade slot to the city. Again, maybe it's still somewhat hard to place, but that's my one gripe to date with Portugal are all those annoying cities one off the coast. In my current game I can see at least 5 or 6 cities like that, and if I could manually place these Feitorias, that would open up a ton of new trading partners.

IIRC city states gain a tile for every envoy send to them, so if you have a good city state to trade with, you can create spots for Feitorias that way.

Having started (but not yet finished) a couple of games with Portugal, I'm now leaning towards that the best strategy is to settle a large number of small cities, and send trade routes from them to a small number of targets, which have as many Feitorias as possible.

 

[Kwami]

IIRC city states gain a tile for every envoy send to them, so if you have a good city state to trade with, you can create spots for Feitorias that way.

And if you're playing with secret societies and choose Owls of Minerva, then every trade route you send also generates an envoy, which might open a tile for a Feitoria. It's a good combination!

 

[Cherenkov]

If you want your first Portugal game to be an absolute blast then download Potato's T40 map(link at bottom). This map is so much fun in every way possible and I don't want to give too much of of it away aside from the fact the he got Lady of the Marsh pantheon and the new wonder so marsh tiles are godly. However, I was really frustrated that I couldn't find Owls of Minerva in my game. Almost 100 turns in and I gave up and went with voidsingers which is still good but I really wanted Owls. Other weird thing is that I couldn't find Nan Midol like he did and missed out on a ton of culture because of it. Allied trade routes with Indonesia was insane gold/foodl/production especially with democracy and wisselbanken. Cultural alliance with Indo really helped too. My capitol was peaking at 345 production before it got wrecked by a 1000 year flood right near the end of the game because I forgot to build a dam lol. Thank god for multiple space ports.

In the end I settled for a T247 science win and still had the most powerful military, 2x the next civ. I was peaking at 1.5k gpt but that came down in the end due to emphasis on food/prod routes and removal of some gold policy cards but was still making over 1k gold per turn in the end. The AIs were really obsessed with some of the city states so I ended up doing a lot of protectorite wars but no real warmongering like Potato did. He had took enough cities to make 2k gpt and still got a SV just 5 turns after me. Plus he was having a lot of fun nuking civs lol. I might replay this just to warmonger like crazy,.

Link to Potato's video(which is extremely entertaining to watch) and his map(follow link to his discord channel in his video):

Spoiler :

Because of the slow start to get the new wonder be prepared for a normal and dark age but after that you easily hit heroic then all golden afterward.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Just a question--i haven't played them--how much of portugal's perceived power stems from setting up very favorable maps for their abilities?

 

[InsidiousMage]

Just a question--i haven't played them--how much of portugal's perceived power stems from setting up very favorable maps for their abilities?

A lot. Their trade bonuses only apply to international trade route over the water so if you play on continents and end up in the middle of a landmass you aren't going to be doing very well. That can be said for a lot of civs though.

 

[Cherenkov]

Yea don't want to be playing Pangea as Portugal The wetlands map that I played via Potato's link was perfectly setup into about 4 different continents. The continent I started on had room for 13 cities. Almost every civ has a lot of coastal cities and your nearest and dearest neighbor Indonesia has several coastal cities to put feitorias for even juicier trade routes. I'm playing this map again and this time snagged Owls. Once you get Press Gangs you can pump out those Naos like crazy but this time around Indonesia has gone crazy with their kampungs so having harder time placing my feitorias so doing more with the city states especially since I have Owls. God it's so nice having so much gold early in the game to just buy monuments and granies and more trade routes. The snowball effect with this civ is just unreal.

 

[Vizurok]

Just a question--i haven't played them--how much of portugal's perceived power stems from setting up very favorable maps for their abilities?

Unleasing the full potential of Portugal is very much map-dependant. Of course, you can avoid RNG and set up an archipelago map that guarantees you a smooth game, but if you go on more landmass-y maps, you might have to struggle to get your bonuses working.

I tried the Continents and Islands map with Portugal, and I played through the ancient era on multiple maps only to realize that the AI and the city states just LOVE to settle not on the coast, but a tile away from the coast, making them unavailable for trade until they set up a Harbor in the distant future. Of course, all of those maps were perfectly winnable but when I'm playing a civ for the first time, I tend to look for a map that fits their playstyle.

Finally, I found a map in which I had a blue CS on the nearby coast, and I got myself a pretty good start only to realize at T80 that I'm locked in to an inland sea with no canal exits. That was a harsh blow but I intended to keep on until I realized that the civ ability screen is quite misleading: even if the trade route would be between two coastal cities, you can't connect them if the trader would need to touch a single land tile. This means that my core cities could not reach any other target but that one CS. Boom, abandon game.

Nearly cryíng, I rolled a few more games, and alas, the next coastal start turned out to be okay. Although my land movement was blocked by mountains to the south (might be a good thing for defensive purposes), I saw that a single canal city would allow me access for two coastal city states and after I met Japan who had a coastal city in the ancient age (a very rare sight), I knew that this map was the one. And that point, the game was won, I just had to keep sending those juicy trade routes ad nauseam and I snowballed into a peaceful T200 SV on Deity.

So, yeah, Portugal, S tier if you get the right map, but if you play random with no rerolls, you might get a C tier, bonus-less civ experience.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

Unleasing the full potential of Portugal is very much map-dependant. Of course, you can avoid RNG and set up an archipelago map that guarantees you a smooth game, but if you go on more landmass-y maps, you might have to struggle to get your bonuses working.

I tried the Continents and Islands map with Portugal, and I played through the ancient era on multiple maps only to realize that the AI and the city states just LOVE to settle not on the coast, but a tile away from the coast, making them unavailable for trade until they set up a Harbor in the distant future. Of course, all of those maps were perfectly winnable but when I'm playing a civ for the first time, I tend to look for a map that fits their playstyle.

Finally, I found a map in which I had a blue CS on the nearby coast, and I got myself a pretty good start only to realize at T80 that I'm locked in to an inland sea with no canal exits. That was a harsh blow but I intended to keep on until I realized that the civ ability screen is quite misleading: even if the trade route would be between two coastal cities, you can't connect them if the trader would need to touch a single land tile. This means that my core cities could not reach any other target but that one CS. Boom, abandon game.

Nearly cryíng, I rolled a few more games, and alas, the next coastal start turned out to be okay. Although my land movement was blocked by mountains to the south (might be a good thing for defensive purposes), I saw that a single canal city would allow me access for two coastal city states and after I met Japan who had a coastal city in the ancient age (a very rare sight), I knew that this map was the one. And that point, the game was won, I just had to keep sending those juicy trade routes ad nauseam and I snowballed into a peaceful T200 SV on Deity.

So, yeah, Portugal, S tier if you get the right map, but if you play random with no rerolls, you might get a C tier, bonus-less civ experience.

Or have a civ that LOVES to settle on coast... like indonesia and Phoenicians for example.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

...Somali Pirates? @Andrew Johnson [FXS] said that it references the Medieval Sultanates.

Definitely not present-day pirates. This might be what the popular image of Somalia is today, but it's not the total of the Horn of Africa's history. The Sultanate of Mogadishu (and the later Ajuran Empire), and even later trade networks of Somali and Swahili merchants up and down the Indian Ocean coast of Africa were founded on protecting trade (well, dominating trade, but you get the idea). While the last two centuries may have been times of decline (and colonization, and anarchy) for the region, the 15th-17th centuries were not.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

Just a question--i haven't played them--how much of portugal's perceived power stems from setting up very favorable maps for their abilities?

Let's say that some heavy map-dependent civs (like the Incas or Mali), if not on their prefered territories (mountains or desert) became some sort of "regular civ", in the way that they have no big special and unique bonuses, but they truly can be played efficiently.
Portugal, on the other hand, if not on its prefered land (coast), then it's basically game over. Your gold will stagnate and you will actively be harmed from this.
Portugal is truly Venice's successor.